Guidance for computing the Number and Percentage of Infants and Toddlers who did not Receive Early Intervention Services for at Least Six Months

This Word document provides guidance for states that can support the calculation of the Number and Percentage of Infants and Toddlers who Received Early Intervention Services for at Least Six Months. The guidance provides information about data requirements, assumptions, and data quality checks. The tool takes into account the expected variability in how states define entry, exit, and time in program.

Issue

Beginning in FFY 2017, states are required to report the number of infants and toddlers who did not receive early intervention services for at least six months before exiting Part C. This number is being used to better estimate the number of infants and toddlers who should be included in the APR C3 child outcomes reporting. Previously the best estimate of the number of infants and toddlers who should be in the Indicator C3 data was the 618 exiting count (Table 3, Report on Infants and Toddlers Exiting Part C). The drawback of using the 618 exiting count to estimate the number of infants and toddlers who should be in the APR C3 child outcomes reporting is that it includes infants and toddlers who were in the program less than 6 months.

Data Considerations

Defining entry and exit States compare the entry and exit date for all infants and toddlers who exited during the reporting period to identify those in the program at least 6 months.

Some examples of events used to define a child’s entry to services include:

Capturing gaps in service

Some states capture gaps in services and deduct those from the total time between entry and exit from the program. Some gaps in service commonly accounted for include: time between a child’s exit and reentry to the program, family vacations, and time spent in the hospital (Kasprzak et al., 2016).

Some states define the cohort of exiters for the 618 Table 3 data using a different date range than that used to define the cohort of exiters for the APR C3 child outcomes reporting. In most cases, states should count the number of those infants and toddlers who did not receive early intervention services for at least six months before exiting the Part C program using the cohort for the APR C3 child outcomes reporting. It would be possible to derive a count from the cohort of exiters used for the 618 Table 3 data as well but this would likely yield a different result than would be obtained using the reporting period for the APR C3 child outcomes.

Checking for Accuracy

When you review the number of infants and toddlers who did not
receive at least 6 months of service perform some checks of the data to ensure
that the number is accurate.

Check that the exit dates included for children in you APR C3 child outcomes exiting cohort are within your APR C3 reporting period. We recommend sorting the data by exit date and checking the first and last entry to make sure they are very close to the beginning and end of your reporting window.

Check the total number of infants and toddlers included in the APR C3 child outcomes count against your 618 Table 3 exiting total. In this case, the total number for the APR C3 should be those with at least 6 months of service + those with less than 6 months of service. The APR C3 total and the 618 Table 3 exiting total should be very close. If those two numbers are very different, check and see why that may be. One reason they may not be close is if the reporting window for the APR C3 child outcomes collection is different than the reporting window for the 618 Table 3 exiting data.

Check the number of invalid or missing dates of infants and toddlers included in the APR C3 child outcomes data. When possible, fill in invalid or missing dates with the corrected values.

Verify that all of the infants and toddlers who exited within the assessment window are included. From that larger set of those with at least 6 months of service + those with less than 6 months of service, count those that had less that 6 months of service. If you are seeing that less than 5% of infants and toddlers had less than 6 months of service it is very likely that you are not pulling all of the infants and toddlers that exited during the window.